Pandemonium

 

Like all good satire, Armando Iannucci and Patrick Marber’s latest venture at the Soho Theatre is both angry and clever.  Pandemonium is a Shakespearian style romp through the Boris years with ‘Orbis Rex’, crowned with his distinctive mussed up blond hair and believing in his destiny as King of the World.   The legacy of that time was front of mind for me before I headed into town for this, in recovery from a cold so taking two covid tests to make sure I wasn’t going to unintentionally kill someone, and conscious that a cough nowadays has a more unsocial resonance than ever. 

Alongside Orbis Rex (Paul Chahidi) the play is packed with clever caricatures;  ‘Richer Sooner’, a sprite with too short trousers, ‘Less Trust’ who envisions herself as queenie but is felled by the question ‘ but have you costed any of this?’.  And then there’s Matt Hemlock, the creature from the swamp, Jacob Rhesus Monkey and Dominant Raab amongst others, all played by the five excellent cast members.  I really enjoyed the structure, the use of blank verse and Shakespearian pastiche (To be in, or not to be in… that is the question)  and even the jig at the end.  There were certainly plenty of laughs, particularly in Orbis’ sense of himself as Winston Churchill or Henry V battling the ‘bat from Wuhan’ a small ridiculous man believing himself to be great.  The laughter though is always at the expense of the creatures on the stage, and the play takes dark turns in its anger when referencing the deaths or the ‘ring of care’ and the venality of every single one of these characters. 

 The play would work as an alternative to panto if it wasn’t for the moral outrage at the heart of this. Sharp and accurate in its aim, I think there is a weakness in that the caricatures are only barely more awful or ridiculous than reality; we are all angry but we are no longer surprised.  So, to quote the closing lines of the play, we all know what we need to do.